You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
I got fed up with all the hard lockups on my brand new 2011 MacBook pro. So I did some reading, called some IT buddies. We tried turning off Sudden Motion Sensor (man pmset). Well, well...after 48 hours, not one single hard freeze.
I think the litmus test is to re-enable Sudden Motion Sensor...but why fix something that (now) isn't broken? 🙂
Don
MacBookPro8,2; iPhone4,1, Mac OS X (10.6.7), The usual sysadmin tools
I read that the 10.6.7 update fixed the freezing issues. I just got a new 17" MBP this week and have not had any freezes. I even put it through some intense loads to get it good and hot.
17" 2.2GHz i7 Quad-Core MacBook Pro 8G RAM 750G + 120G OCZ Vertex 3 SSD Boot HD
The SMS protects your hard drive from a head crash if the machine is dropped. You shouldn't disable it. Your Mac is under warranty; let Apple figure out what's wrong with it.
Hi Linc,
Perhaps my post was a little unclear. I contacted Applecare and as expected, they are clueless. After a couple follow up calls, I insisted the issue get escalated to tier2. As expected, the more senior/experienced tier2 support staff (senior engineers) exercised due diligence and ask for logs, etc. No clues...but it was a good effort.
After tier2 gave up, I contacted my friends, some of whom are senior engineers at Apple (or were), and the consensus was to temporarily disable Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) as a test. I did, and pleased to say I haven't had any crashes in more than 2 days.
I'll enable SMS again next week to see if crashes come back. If so, I'm happy to run with SMS off, at least until Apple releases a fix for this issue.
PS, as I pointed out in a previous post on another (somewhat related) thread, SMS is very important...that said, this is simply a troubleshooting step to see if we can isolate the issue. The world is not going to end by disabling this for a few days. 🙂
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2801299?answerId=15049409022#15049409022
Don
Hi Mac Medic,
The 10.6.7 update for 2011 MacBook Pro laptops fixed an issue (freezes) related to the video card.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1368
The freezes I'm seeing appear to be related to SMS.
Don
120 hours and counting...not a single hard freeze. I will wait a few more days, then I will re-enable Suddem Motion Sensor (SMS) to see if crashes return.
Don
Don, a quick question regarding your hard freeze if I may. Once you get the hard freeze, how do you get your machine out of it? (With my present '07 MacBook Pro, simply removing the battery did the trick. However Saturday I just ordered the new '11 MBPro, which does not have a removable battery)
Thanks in advance for any insight,
Keith
As an at best temporary workaround, do what you like, but this is not the way your MacBook Pro should be working.
If it's a software issue, Apple needs to fix it.
If it's a hardware issue with your MBP, shutting off the sensor won't fix the issue long term.
William Kucharski wrote:
As an at best temporary workaround, do what you like, but this is not the way your MacBook Pro should be working.
If it's a software issue, Apple needs to fix it.
If it's a hardware issue with your MBP, shutting off the sensor won't fix the issue long term.
Of course...perhaps my post subject should have read "possible workaround". 🙂
Turning off Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) makes the crashes go away. More than three dozen of our laptop users (out of several hundred) have this problem. We disabled SMS and the problem went way.
Is this a long term fix? Of course not. It's a workaround. At least until Apple acknowledges and fixes the problem (bugreport sent in).
Thanks,
Don
I’ve read all the posts similar to this one (there are many!), and finally decided to install gfxCardStatus, to disable dynamic switching and actually to work ONLY with integrated card. Not one freeze since then (4 days ago - whilst it was freezing 1 to 4 times per day). Not as fast as in the past, but I can live with it until a EFI update. HTH
The video card freeze was addressed by the 2011 MacBook Pro version ofthe 10.6.7 updater. This issue is not related to the video card.
in my case the 10.6.7 updater didn’t solve this issue at all. Working only with integrated video card is so far the solution for me.
Interesting. I've been using the gfxCardStatus utility to force the video card to stay in discrete mode. Integrated mode won't work for me since I work off a Lenovo ThinkVision 22" monitor (work).
The 10.6.7 update for 2011 MacBook Pro reduced the number of crashes for me. I was getting several hard freezes a day; now it's down to one every 24 hours or so (scattered times).
Since I disabled Sudden Motion Sensor, I haven't had a single hard freeze in over 1 week. 🙂
I know it's not a good thing to disable it, but doing so means our users can work. They're all warned that any sudden motion can damage the drive (but isn't this where we were before SMS was added as a feature?). 😉
I updated my bug report. It's on Apple's radar. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like many folks are having this issue. I did upgrade my RAM to 8G and Crucial has a lifetime warranty...but I don't think it's RAM related. I really think SMS is kicking in when it shouldn't, and parking the arm. This would explain why there are no hints in any log files.
Don
I disabled SMS in the past while investigating (I’ve tried everything possible but formatting the drive and reinstalling OS-X), and didn’t solve the problem, but this is maybe because there are more problems overlapping. I have a factory-installed SSD, so I’m not risking anything if the SMS is disabled (weird: should be useless if you have a SSD drive...).
I will try to disable it again and run with discrete only... interesting to see what happens... 😉
Gian
Cant agree with your more, Don. The new 10.6.7 update did not solve the freeze problem on my 2011 MacBook Pro 15' 2.2GHz.
The BEST record my MacBook pro currently holding is froze 4 times within 5 minutes, and it was on yesterday. The freezing problem occurred a couple days after i started using it and i could feel it become much severe after i installed the update of safari released last month. I read the crashing report every time and the words I could often see from the report are safari/launch/Kernel.
Really have no clue about what i can do at the moment, and i am kind of suspect the problems were caused by the RAM since the only difference my macbook pro 15 is having here could be the upgraded 8GB RAM... actually i have been planing to re-install MacOS these days...
Look forward to seeing the new update soooooon.
Randee
i have same problem and unfortunately i can say that i've tried and there is no any solution with re-install MacOS 10.6.7
there is a one solution that renew it with another mac wihtin return days.
by the way i have a question that i bought my mac from u.s but now i am in Turkey. i can't go back to u.s for a month. can i return it to apple store in Turkey with my bill?
2011 MacBook Pro hard freeze - possible fix (man pmset)
